AROUND THE GOLF CLUBS
A FEW months back I wrote a piece on technology destroying golf and gave examples of how far players are hitting the ball today compared to 20 years ago. In recent weeks we have seen the R&A come out and state that something must be done with either the ball or club technology, as 68 players on the USPGA tour are now averaging more than 300 yards off the tee, something only managed by the likes of John Daly and Tiger Woods 20 years ago.
Whether laws will be introduced to the game governing balls and clubs remains to be seen, but it was with great interest that I recently read about a long driving competition that took place almost seventy years ago and it was won with a drive of 280 yards.
The event took place at Portmarnock in conjunction with the Men’s Home International matches, and Irish players swept the boards with the legendary Jimmy Bruen smashing one all of 280 yards, followed closely by Joe Carr (265 yards) and our own Dr Billy O’Sullivan who hit it 250 yards. Four other members of the Irish team managed to hit it further than 235 yards with the best attempt from the Scots, English and Welsh combined coming in at 230 yards, some fifty yards behind Bruen.
Now I know that steel shafts were in use back then, but they were fairly primitive as they had only been introduced here in the mid-1930s and were nothing like today’s shafts, while the heads of drivers were made of wood (most likely persimmon) and were probably half the size of today’s drivers.
As for the ball, they were of course using the old wound ‘small ball’ - the 1.62 size that went out of use in the 1980s
- but that is simply amazing length from the tee considering what they were actually using in terms of equipment.
Some 12 years later, in 1961 at Sundridge Park Golf Club in Kent, Joe Carr won a long driving event with a tee shot of 311 yards, beating most of Europe’s top professionals, while two years later Jack Nicklaus recorded a drive of 341 yards.
Yes, you can say that these events were isolated, and they were the exception rather than the rule but in my humble opinion golfers were better players back then because they got little or no benefit from their equipment.